I write about the television business. Why networks cancel your favorite shows, why sure things don’t go to series, why the Nielsen ratings still matter, if it concerns the small screen, it concerns me too. I've studied media since college and have been covering television since 2009 for sites such as FilmSchoolRejects.com and ScreenInvasion.com. In that time I've learned it’s one of the most fascinating entertainment mediums to explore. It’s a medium that runs a million miles a minute where one week’s smash hit can be another week’s failure. It takes a trained eye to understand its complexity, and that’s what I intend to do.

The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

The Marketing Of 'Orphan Black' Is A Glimpse Into The Complexity Of International Television

As far as surprise hits go, few can compete with the acclaim received by newcomer Orphan Black in 2013. A Canadian production by birth, the series picked up major steam with both fans and fellow television personalities (including Patton Oswalt and Josh Friedman) during its freshman season, which aired on both sides of the border with simulcasts on BBC America and the Canadian network Space. Now with the premiere of season two a little over a month away, both networks are using different styles to attack two completely different types of viewership.

This action-packed, quote-heavy trailer from Space simply acknowledges the show’s high energy as it says “everyone loves this show, you should too.” Instead of selling a mystery (we’ll get to that), Space just took the approach of assuming people are going to love the show outright and do very little to sell the story itself. Rather this trailer sells the idea of a story. The promise of momentum and high energy. A completely fair marketing tactic, but one that’s completely opposite from that of the network’s American counterpart, BBC America.

In addition to some very fascinating Instagram teasers that were released during much of last week, today, BBC America released this trailer to the world. Unlike the one from Space, this piece of material makes zero mention of the critical admiration for the series. Instead, all the focus of this trailer is put on the psychological aspects of the show. The mind-bending twists of why the clones exists and who had them commissioned. It’s very telling about the kind of audience BBC America wants to attract. It wants the audience that loves a mystery, not the one that’s coming for the action alone.

Perhaps what these two networks realized is there’s no such thing as “territorial strategy” anymore. When that Space trailer hit YouTube, it hit all of YouTube. American outlets were writing it up not because it was the first “Canadian” trailer for Orphan Black season two, but because it was the first trailer of any kind for Orphan Black season two. While a network itself must usually be constrained by a single marketing strategy, the benefit of having two completely different networks handle the marketing of the same series for the same dated premiere is clear. This divide and conquer strategy allowed Orphan Black to cast a far wider net with very low risk to the individual networks themselves. What one does, benefits the other no matter what.

Despite audience awareness of the truth, Orphan Black is a rare breed of international series. Its parent networks have opted to work independent of one another (from a public perspective) and by doing so, have been able to attack the audience the way the show deserves. In many ways, the marketing strategies of this series are as interesting as the series itself. While they are working with the same set of materials, the results are wholly unique based on the territory. But thanks to the internet, just because something is created for a particular territory, it doesn’t mean that clip’s viewership is limited to a spot on a map. That is the beauty of Orphan Black‘s game of marketing chess.

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